You’d be hardpressed to find a rom-com fan who hasn’t seen the marvel that is Notting Hill.
Starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, the 1999 flick told the story of an American movie star, Anna Scott (Roberts) who falls in love with a bumbling British bookshop owner, William Thacker, in, you guessed it, Notting Hill.
In an interview with Fox News — to promote his new series The Undoing with Nicole Kidman — Grant spoke about doing a sequel to the film which was released at the peak of his romantic comedy career.
“I would like to do a sequel to one of my own romantic comedies that shows what happened after one of those films ended,” he told the outlet, before destroying all of our hopes and dreams. “Really, to prove the terrible lie that they all were, that it was a happy ending.
“I’d like to do me and Julia and the hideous divorce that’s ensued with really expensive lawyers, children involved in (a) tug of love, flood of tears. Psychologically scarred forever. I’d love to do that film.”
In a year of reboots, remakes and sequels, if this idea came to fruition, we’d never believe in love again.
Grant’s career at the time was soaring with movies including Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Mickey Blue Eyes (1999), Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001), Two Weeks Notice (2002) and Love Actually (2003) and while his earlier work was all comedy and roses, his more recent work has taken him a very different direction.
In 2019, Grant played the sneaky and slimy Fletcher in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentleman. It was a far cry from his bumbling rom-com days and cemented his foray into the next chapter of his career.
Now, the 60-year-old is playing Jonathan Fraser in The Undoing — a charming doctor who within the first episode unravels to become a suspected murderer.
In an interview with TV Guide back in January, Grant said it was a “relief” to be playing different characters.
“Christ, it’s such a relief [to play bad guys]. I can’t tell you. Richard Curtis, who wrote all of those romantic comedies did a lot of – it always used to make him laugh that people thought I was that nice, public, Englishman because he knew that exactly the reverse was true.”
We’re pretty excited to see his diverse acting chops too!